From: Dave Baldwin <dave.baldwin@3dlabs.com>
Date: 2008-02-13T17:42:58+09:00
Subject: Re: New Ruby developer Rake questions


On 12 Feb 2008, at 20:22, Joe Wirtley wrote:

> I am relatively new to Ruby and I am trying to introduce Rake to build
> my .NET system.  I have a series of related projects that I'd like to
> build either separately or together.  Conceptually, I have the  
> following
> structure:
>
> Root
>   Rakefile
>   Supporting ruby files
>
>   Child Project 1
>      Rakefile
>
>   Child Project 2
>      Rakefile
>
> I want to be able to build each child project separately, or the  
> entire
> tree with the root rakefile.  I have two questions:
>
> 1. I have supporting ruby files (defining tasks) in the root folder  
> that
> I want to be referenced from the child project rakefiles.  I'm not
> thrilled about something like:
>
>   require '..\..\Support.rb'
>
> but it does seem to work.  What is the "best" way to handle this?  I
> would rather that the scripts work on any machine with the same  
> relative
> directory structures.
>

Not sure why you don't like this.  An alternative would be to change  
your load path variable:

$:.unshift '..\..'
require 'Support'


> 2. What is the best way to handle these "nested" rakefiles?
>
> I've tried something like this to include the child rakefiles in the
> root rakefile:
>
>   namespace "child_project1" do
>       require 'ChildProject1\rakefile.rb'
>   end
>
>   task :default => [ "child_project1:default" ]
>
> The problem I have with this approach is in the child rakefiles.  I
> specify relative paths to files within the child rakefiles, which  
> works
> great when I run the child rakefile within its own folder.  However,
> when I require it from a parent rakefile, the relative paths don't  
> work
> out.  I've tried to leverage the __FILE__ variable to identify files
> relative to the rakefile, but cannot make it work successfully  
> (mostly I
> can't make it work elegantly, which makes me think there some Ruby  
> magic
> I don't know).  So what's the best way to approach this?
>

I often do something along the lines of:

sh "cd childDir; rake -f ../../Rakefile build"

in the top level Rakefile which will change to the child directory and  
then run a fresh ruby and rake session.

Dave.


> Thanks in advance,
> Joe
> -- 
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
>